Re: [Fwd: Judy Garland & Eli, Eli (Kahn)]

[Eliott Kahn <Elkahn...>]

George:

I didn't see the Garland special but if she sang it for Louis B. Mayer (with an 
"a") it would have been in the 1930s. The Wizard of Oz, filmed when Garland was 
still a teenager was released in 1939.

The song she most likely sang for Mayer was Eli Eli, originally written for the 
Yiddish theatre. Except for its opening line: Eli Eli loma asavtoni (from Ps.22 
as well as the Gospel of St. Matthew), the remainder of the song is a Yiddish 
plaint to God from the suffering Jew: " ... In feier in flam hot men uns 
gebrent ..." According to Irene Heskes, the song was extremely popular, sung 
years later by Yossele Rosenblatt on his vaudeville tours, and published in 
several editions-- including a a setting done by Michael Schalit for the St. 
Petersburg Folk Music Society. Yet the song was originally written by Peretz 
Jacob Koppel Sandler in 1896 for a Yiddish show at the Windsor Theatre on the 
Bowery in New York City.

The Senesh poem is entirely in Hebrew, the first lines beginning: "Eli, Eli, 
shelo yigameir l'olam...."

Eliott Kahn


At 11:27 PM 3/1/01 -0500, you wrote:
>This posting is from the H-Judaic list. I pass it along for the wiser
>heads on this list to offer an answer.
>
>George
>
>
>"Faydra L. Shapiro" wrote:
>
> > From: Yoel Kahn <ykahn (at) gtu(dot)edu>
> > Subject: Judy Garland & Eli, Eli
> > 
> > On the recent TV movie about Judy Garland=92s life, the young Judy audition=
> > s
> > for Louis B. Meyer.  At the end of the audition, he says to her sing
> > something from opera and she offers =93Eli, Eli.=94  She then sings (in Heb=
> > rew)
> > the familiar song, using the words of Hannah Senesh.  In so far as the
> > Senesh poem, by all accounts, was not written until the 40=92s, this appear=
> > s
> > to be an anachronism.  Someone suggested to me that there is an Eli, Eli
> > (different words ) which was performed by Jan Peerce and would have
> > plausibly been in young Judy=92s repetoire.  I am assuming that contemporar=
> > y
> > Hollywood writers are alums of modern No. American Jewish summer camp
> > culture and only know about the Senesh poem version, and so unwittingly
> > created this anachronistic scene. Does this make sense to those who know
> > more about this than I?
> > 
> > Yoel H. Kahn, Ph.D.
> > Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California
> > ------=_NextPart_000_000C_01C0A259.7496C1C0--
>
>-- 
>George Robinson
>Author, Essential Judaism
>Please visit my website, "Essential Judaism and Beyond"
>at www.GeorgeRobinson.freeservers.com
>

Dr. Eliott Kahn
Music Archivist
Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
3080 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
WK: (212) 678-8076
FAX (212) 678-8998
elkahn (at) jtsa(dot)edu

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